I had a strange experience recently on, I believe, Facebook. It might have been Twitter, but I think it was Facebook. Having a cursory pass through my newsfeed, something caught my eye. It was a headline for a fairly typical slightly clickbaity article. It featured a young woman, presumably a model or actress, standing next to a billboard on which she featured. The headline was a quote from her, something like this:
Isn’t that just the classic signifier or a stupid, or at least uneducated, person? How could they possibly confuse these two antonyms? And of course this mistake is especially ironic as it’s related to education and learning. However, if you’re the type of person who likes to make themselves feel smarter by noting how people make this mistake but you don’t, perhaps you need to rethink how wrong these people actually are.
Not that I’ve ever doubted that it’s normal, but it was nice to have it confirmed by this article I read today. I’ve spoken to three dogs so far today, on a variety of different topics. I spoke to one in particular more than the others, as we spent a good part of the day together. I variously asked about his logic behind marking his territory as frequently as he did, indicated the dangers inherent in crossing the road, explained to him where I was going when I left and gave him a rough indication of when I’d return, and generally enquired as to his wellbeing. And I still feel pretty normal. This also applies, by the way, to talking to cats and other pets; plants; and inanimate objects.
This evening, while cycling home from work, a thought occurred to me. A slightly panicked thought. I recalled that in my post yesterday I’d linked to an article, and I thought…
Did I include the link!? (Clearly my cycling thoughts aren’t as interesting as my running thoughts. I suppose I’m too focussed on the road)
You see, rather than write my post directly on my blog, as I usually do, yesterday I’d written it as a word document, as I wasn’t online at the time, and then copied it onto the blog later. And then of course I included all the links. Or did I? Because it would be very easy to forget to (spoiler alert: I didn’t). Before I got home and put my mind at ease, I felt a little annoyed. If I had forgotten it, how stupid would that look? It would be so obvious I’d forgotten the link, and it would be unfortunate for anyone reading it, as they’d miss out on what was a very interesting article. But then, another thought occurred to me: would that actually be so bad?
Here are the Google-Image search results for the word ethnic.
It’s probably not too surprising: lots of ethnic designs of the style you’d expect. But my question is: what exactly is an ethnic design?
The word ethnic means related to a specific population subgroup with a common cultural tradition. Referring to something as ethnic in and of itself is therefore effectively meaningless. Everybody and everything is basically ethnic, as we can all be identified as belonging to some particular ethnic group. When we talk about ethnic design, the same principle should therefore apply: any design is by definition ethnic. Of course it can be more specific than that. You could argue that ethnic design could refer to a design that is unique to a specific culture, and considered traditional within that culture. Continue reading
When does English sound like jazz?
When you’re Irish.
When I was a younger man I thought nothing of talking about my habits and routines in such terms:
I do be going to the park regularly.
I do be often working on Saturdays.
If I were to translate that into more standard English, it would be:
I go to the park regularly.
I often work on Saturdays.
These latter sentences are in the present simple tense, which we use to talk about routines, habits, and general truths. So why would I choose a more convoluted form instead of something more… simple? Well, you can’t change where you’re born. Such a structure (I do be +-ing), while not so common anymore, was a common part of Irish English (or Hiberno-English). Continue reading
English-Language Thoughts 